Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a treatment of Shi'a Islam from the emic or inside perspective of Shi'a Islam itself, as opposed to the perspective of orientalism, or of comparative religion, or sociology or some other branch of the humanities with their modern Western perspectives, all of which are philosophical approaches (in the sense that they have philosophical rather than religious underpinnings) and therefore do not, strictly speaking, deal with the religion itself as it is understood by the clerisy of its practitioners, but do so from a perspective and ideological framework that is alien and indeed antithetical and at times hostile to it. The True Origins and Teachings of Shi'a Islam is perhaps the first major work which is a single-volume treatment of the religion of Shi'a Islam as such, which approaches the subject not only from an insider's perspective, but one that is also comparative, comparing and contrasting the origins and teachings of Shi'a Islam with that of the mainstream or majoritarian strain. To put it another way, Sabah Bayati's major contribution to Islamic studies and Shi'a studies in particular deals with the intellectual and specifically theological history of Islam as opposed to its political and military history, which is the usual focus of Western and orientalist approaches, which have not really understood Islam's early intellectual and theological history, and are thus at a loss as to be able to explain it. The book is divided into six chapters. The first discusses what Islam and submission to the will of God mean. The second discusses the sources of religion authority (and how Sonni and Shi'a Islam differ on this point, i.e. the crucial question of the difference between nass and ejtehad, and how these two different takes bear on the definition of Islam, i.e. on submission to the will of God). Chapters three and four provide a detailed discussion of the origin of Shi'a Islam and its early development; a brief Shi'a Creed is also provided. Chapter five discusses the deviated and extremist sects which Shi'a Islam's enemies have associated with it, and disambiguates Shi'a Islam from them. And finally, chapter six discusses some additional false memes which the disingenuous and/ or uninformed have associated with Shi'a Islam, including the Abdollah b. Saba meme and the meme of the supposed Persian Origin of Shi'a Islam.
